As the Fourth of July draws nigh, it is not too late also to celebrate the Independence Day of sports. It was yesterday, July 1, when we gained our freedom from that most invasive form of unrelenting irrelevance: the mock draft.

With the NHL draft two days in the rearview mirror and with last week’s NBA draft fading rapidly from our awareness, not to mention the NFL draft a distant memory, we are free and clear of the guessing games that wrap themselves in faux legitimacy. The mock drafts that appeared everywhere have been banished to Mel Kiper’s basement for the summer.

Speaking of Kiper, who is credited — discredited? — with the proliferation of this made-for-TV-and-Internet mock schlock, it is worth noting that Kiper went 0 for 32 with his first-round mock draft during April’s NFL cattle call. Todd McShay, Kiper’s cohort at ESPN, correctly matched four players with their drafting team in the first round.

This is genius?

My intent is not to ridicule Kiper or anyone else who partakes in such a futile attempt to predict the future; I myself dabble in dumb each December when attempting to predict the outcomes of college bowl games. My success rate is about the same as the completion percentage of the previous 10 Cleveland Browns quarterbacks: pitiful.

Rather, the message here is to mock the mocks themselves, which is to say that any mock draft list should be seen as a silly second cousin to an NCAA Tournament office pool. For, ahem, entertainment purposes only. To think otherwise is to invest in fool’s gold.

Still, some take the make-believe draft predictions as gospel, probably because they are sold that way by TV networks thirsting for ratings and websites desperate to paint themselves as insider authorities.

Before Sunday’s NHL draft, Aaron Portzline, the sage Blue Jackets beat writer for The Dispatch, refrained from ruminating on which team would take which player. He explained his decision thusly: “The night before the draft, I looked at the clock, and it was already 11 p.m. I figured, ‘Oh well.’ ”

Or something like that.

The point is, for their creators, mock drafts are the equivalent of getting dressed in the dark.

“They’re for people who are willing to make a mockery of themselves,” Portzline said, adding that mock drafts can fairly be compared with sports talk radio. Light conversation more than deep discussion.

“Nobody in the world had Seth Jones going fourth (overall) to Nashville,” Portzline said of an NHL draft shocker in which Jones dropped into the lap of the Predators after most mock drafts had him at No. 1 or 2.

Likewise, the NBA draft began with an out-of-nowhere pick when the Cleveland Cavaliers took UNLV forward Anthony Bennett No. 1 overall, setting in motion a chain-reaction doomsday scenario for so-called draft gurus.

“When a switch comes at No. 1, no one (who does mock drafts) has it good,” said Jason Lloyd, Cavs beat writer for the Akron Beacon-Journal.

Lloyd can laugh at his inability to hit the bull’s-eye — he was 1 for 30, correctly predicting only that the Washington Wizards would draft Otto Porter Jr. at No. 3 — because he knows the absurdity of the endeavor.

“It’s idiotic,” he said. “Like trying to fill out an NCAA Tournament bracket and get them all right.”

Understood. But 1 for 30?

“We’re only as good as the people we talk to, and they are flat-out lying to our faces,” Lloyd said, chuckling. “So how are we going to get it right? And then we look like fools.”

Lloyd shared how that last year, he won a friendly competition against other Cavs writers by correctly picking seven out of 30 first-round picks.

“But that’s still (only .233), which means I’d get cut by any major-league baseball team,” he said.

Of course, that means first he would need to be drafted by one. Kiper? What say you?

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